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The National Palace Museum of Taiwan can be considered the Louvre of the Orient for the richness and scope of its collections of antiquities, painting, calligraphy, objets d’art, books and documents. Its holdings originate from the imperial collections of the Ch’ing dynasty, and the earlier Sung, Yuan and Ming dynasties, and constitute the central core of Chinese culture and art.
Its history is a tumultuous one. At the time of the founding of the Chinese Republic, the collections were stored in the inner court of the northern sector of the Prohibited City, from where they were moved by the republican government to the outer court in 1917. The early years of the Republic were rife with conflicts between various warlords. In 1924, Feng Yuhsiang occupied Beijing, compelling the last emperor, P’u-i, to leave the Prohibited City and constituted the Committee for the Disposition of the Ch’ing Imperial Possessions, thereby stanching further losses of works from the collection.
The Palace Museum was officially inaugurated on October 10, 1925 in Beijing and its collections were opened to the public. The museum consisted then in just two departments - Antiquities and Books. In 1928 the Nationalist army entered Beijing and put I P’ei-chi in charge of the museum and formally converted it into a governmental institution. This period, considered the golden age of the museum in China, exhibition activities grew significantly, and by 1936 hundreds of books had been published on the museum’s holdings.
In 1931, following the turmoil in northern China, the Nationalist government decided to evacuate the collections to Shanghai, after which they were again moved to specially constructed storage facilities at the Taoist monastery of Ch’ao-t’ien-kung in Nanking.
Following the Marco Polo Bridge incident of 1937 the collections were divided between Pa-hsien in Szechwan and Nanking, then after the fall of Shanghai were evacuated to various destinations, the final one being Lo-shan in the Szechwan province.
During the Sino-Japanese War, the museum limited itself to protecting the collections, which remained crated and packed, though, despite the difficulties, a few exhibitions were held. After the Japanese defeat in August 1945, the Palace Museum reassembled the collection from the storage sites in Pa-hsien, O-mei and Lo-shan, sending all of them to Nanking.
In the autumn of 1948, after bitter fighting between the Nationalist and Communist armies, it was decided to ship the most precious objects to Taiwan, where work was begun cataloguing the collections and resuming the practice of exchange with other international museums. New museum facilities were completed in 1965 in a suburb of Taipei, and since then the museum has undergone numerous expansions. The museum’s activities expanded as well, incorporating teaching, research, publishing and collaborations with other international institutions. The complete inventory of the collections, which comprise the finest pieces of fine art and applied art in China’s long history, was completed in 1991.
The collaboration between Alessi and the NPM of Taiwan grew out of the museum’s wish to open itself yet further to the international scene, and to encourage greater awareness of Chinese history and culture in the West.
We asked Stefano Giovannoni to imagine and design a sort of mascot for the new Museum of the 21st Century. From this was born "The Chin Family" series for the "A di Alessi" catalogue: a group of characters, each of whom represents a specific household function. "Mr. Chin" is also a new chapter in the ludic design language that characterises Stefano’s work: instead of the usual method of casting a single piece of plastic from a single injection, the character-objects are made with separate moulds (head, hat, body, foot, pompom) which are then assembled like wooden soldiers or porcelain dolls, thereby giving greater articulation to the typical wit and refinement of Giovannoni’s decorations of the clothes, which are hand-painted.
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